Nov. 3--City Council voted unanimously for a 90-day moratorium on the licensing of any medical marijuana dispensaries following a two-hour public hearing Monday night.
The decision means the next council, with four members to be elected today, could make the final decision on whatever regulations the city will apply.
Councilwoman Barbara Vidmar, who is leaving council, urged her colleagues to address the issue before January, to avoid turning the thorny issue over to the newly elected council members.
All the council members supported the moratorium but said they wanted to move cautiously. City Manager Jerry Pacheco said he envisioned a series of ordinances touching many issues from zoning to license requirements, meaning any decisions before January are unlikely.
The hearing brought a crowd of about 60 people to council chambers, nearly all urging the city to work toward licensing dispensaries. Although the ordinance on the table was only a 90-day moratorium, many of the speakers endorsed marijuana as a drug that helps treat their medical problems -- from migraine headaches and epilepsy to suicidal depressions.
Tom Sexton, whose MediMar Ministries is planning to open a dispensary on the South Side, emphasized that marijuana is medicine to 11,000 Coloradans who have doctor certifications to receive it.
"We want to work with council in doing this right," Sexton said, saying it disturbed him to read news reports where some dispensers in other cities have coached people in how to obtain doctor permission.
Steve Zammarripa said his dispensary doesn't have an address because he meets his "patients" in restaurants and in other places. He wasn't very sympathetic that council needed time to consider whether to license the dispensaries. He said voters approved medical marijuana years ago.
"We've been legal for four years and you're just figuring out that we're here?" he said. "If you don't allow us to operate, you'll just force the community underground. We don't want that, to have to meet our patients in restaurants where they slide a $20 across the table."
Some speakers said the dispensaries would provide thousands of dollars in sales tax for the city.
Tom Lopez of Rocky Mountain Therapeutic said there are 80 dispensaries in Colorado, and one in Colorado Springs is collecting $30,000 in sales tax per month. He said Colorado Springs is not trying to eliminate the 14 dispensaries in that city, but is requiring at least one to move locations because of zoning issues -- it was located too close to Palmer High School.
Not all the speakers wanted to allow dispensaries in Pueblo.
Beverly Kinard of Canon City, a national anti-drug activist, urged council to ban them, as some cities have done. She said her adult son's severe health problems were caused by smoking marijuana as a young teenager.
"This is the biggest farce I can possibly imagine," she said, dismissing
claims it would raise tax revenue. She said law enforcement problems from more
marijuana use would offset any gain. "When the people voted for this in 2000, they didn't know (how potent marijuana is today)," she said.
"No one is making you license a dispensary," she said.
Ronald Hadlock, an epileptic, countered that no one under 21 is eligible for medical marijuana. He argued the drugs he takes for epilepsy are toxic over time and that doctors only increased his seizure medication when it failed.
"This is for responsible adults," he insisted.
Connie Wells, owner of Connie's School of Dance, 117 Colorado Ave., said she didn't deny that some ill people benefitted from marijuana, but she didn't want Sexton opening his dispensary across the street from her business, which serves about 100 children.
"Like a liquor store, they should have solicited the neighborhood to see if we wanted it there," Wells said. "I don't want it across the street from me, near the children who come to my business and who pass by."
Larry Fancher, a council candidate in District 3, challenged council on why it was having an "emergency" hearing on the ordinance Monday, instead of waiting until the regular televised meeting next week.
Fancher said liquor and cigarette sales do more physical harm to Pueblo residents than medical marijuana dispensaries.
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